5/08/2004

(I have no idea... written by accident during 12 minutes of absent-minded typing, and gradually edited into presentability. Which, after reading it over a dozen or so times, may have been a mistake.)

The Unquenchable Shaman Droon

Injun Dan was at her side all night and day, applying soothing balms and ointments, but her cold—at first I had thought it was just a bad cold--was taking on a life of its own, taking a turn for the worse, sucking all the forces from her. So I made the fateful call: I rang up Shaman Droon, on his shaman cellphone--55W-ITCH.

Ring ring. “Hello, this is Shaman Droon," a mysterious voice said. "Yes, Shaman Droon--please come over here to 7 wicklow way for a look at a patient--she's a sickly Dutch boarding student. Her name is Miss Broomhilda and she's very ill, and now she's emitting pus in a most disturbingly pus-manufacturing manner,”... “Pus, eh? I'll be there right away,” and then click.

Fifteen minutes later a cab pulled up and out stepped the Shaman. Well, It was either him or an imposter. But no, this was no imposter. This was the Shaman Droon.

He was a tall, cobra-faced man with a scaly serpentine hide to match. And judging from his greasy palms, he had spent many years of his shaman life applying restorative balms to the faces and secret under-crevices of ailing patients such as my charge, Miss Broomhilda Powergaarden.

Young Miss Broomhilda, age 20 and a promising student of literature, was not a native Haitian. But half her life had been spent on the island, rooming in our house, after she had defected as a 10-year-old from the Netherlands--a spunky pint-sized stowaway on a Port-au-Prince-bound pineapple barge. But the hows and whys of her defection constitute a more whimsical tale for another, more whimsical telling--for almost a week she had been quite pale, flopping about on her sick bed, closer and closer to her "reunion with the unyielding Reaper", as she might literarily have termed it; the river of blood pouring from her face and ears was like "an effluvia of bloodied plasma, a stream of blood-like matter"--it was a real scary snootful of blood, and it was all of it Broomhilda's.

The shaman strode inside through the foyer, pausing a half-second to scoff at a print Van Gogh hanging on the wall—“that flamboyant, one-eared charlatan,” he remarked poignantly. He coolly layed his toolbox of spices and incense on the kitchen counter and asked to be led to the patient’s room, on the second floor, where Injun Dan and the gardener, Thelonius, kept their pathetic vigil. Once upstairs the shaman took one cursory look at BroomHilda twitching on the bed, and he spat, angrily, through an open window. The spittle landed on a dog below--an Irish Setter, I think; the creature immediately went mad, chasing its tail and humping a jacaranda tree.

We had just met the shaman but were already filling up with shock and awe at everything he did. “Fetch me a pail of ice-cold Kool-Aid,” the shaman said with an expectant air, addressing no one in particular. We obeyed, all three at once—his magnetic voice would tolerate no lollygaggery—and we soon surrounded the shaman with buckets and buckets of Kool-Aid, flavours ranging from Tropical Mango to Blueberry Blast to Zesty Cherry, even Wild Ocean Citrus Spray. “Here is your Kool-Aid, shaman sir,” I piped up, “will you use it now to heal our beloved Broomhilda?" Staring wondrously into his hypnotic steel eyes, I half-expected some sort of rebuke: “Nonsense,” scoffed the shaman as kool-aid splooshed nervously out the top of our pails--“I happen to be rather thirsty.”

He drained the bucket of Blueberry Blast in one gargantuan gulp, slamming the empty vessel back down on the table top and licking his lips. “Now that’s what I call summertime refreshment," he chuckled like an angel-demon possessed. The three of us absolutely were struck with awe, murmuring superlatives to each other, agape around Broomhilda's bed. But the sage would have none of it: “Fools--have you not noticed how hot it is today? My lips are wicked-parched.” A look at the thermometer was enough to affirm his mystic utterance: it was a scorching 38 degrees celsius outside--the temperature of human innards--indeed, a real cooker. We looked back again at the master, sweat dripping from his nostrils. He smirked, and then full-on grimaced, "Hot enough for you?"

Shock and awe coursed again through the room; the great Droon had wasted no time living up to his reputation. “Now fetch me another pail of the Blueberry Blast,” the miracle-man cried, “for, in all my years of shamanry, I have found the Tropical mango Kool-Aid to be of a far too tarty unpleasantness—absolutely undrinkable--and let us remember, I have sick patients to heal, and wonders to perform!” Once more, there was shock and awe in excess; were I to hold the shaman's gaze any longer, I felt I might burst into flames, or my lungs would explode from his sheer, beverage-devouring magnanimity. I looked out the window toward the sky, wishing to thank the Maker--but all I could see was a dog humping a tree.

Broomhilda groaned dirgelike from the four-poster canopy bed; her spasmodically twitching pelvis knocked over a kerosene lamp, which immediately burst into flames. My mind came back from its awestruck reverie; “Does this mean she is getting worse,” I asked nervously, “because I’m afraid she might—“

“Imbecile,” interjected the shaman, dodging a piece of flaming debris, “am I not the one who cures people in this village?”

I gazed at the ground, stricken with shame.

“Yes, yes of course Shaman Droon.”

Injun Dan had come back with another brimming pail of sugar water, but the master healer waved him away. “That’s quite enough Kool-Aid," he spoke. "Now let’s have at this bleeding wench of yours…”